No/low caffeine, it's a match(a) !

It’s a fact: we don’t drink like before anymore. It’s not just about our alcohol and soda consumption, which is decreasing - with the emergence of a multitude of alternatives such as kombucha or kefir. Coffee, too, is changing: it finds itself challenged by drinks with a more moderate caffeine rate, or even without any caffeine at all. Since the Covid crisis, the world is thirsty for new proposals, and frequents coffeshops like never before. Mentalities are also changing: we increasingly question our relationship with coffee, and its potential side effects: nervousness, anxiety, digestive disorders, etc.

It is hard,, in this context, not to start with the new star of less caffeinated drinks: matcha tea. Most often mixed with milk, it is available in hot or iced latte. According to the market research firm NIQ, retail sales of matcha in the United States have increased by 86% over the last three years. Starbucks, for its part, announced a 40% increase in matcha sales in the first quarter of 2025 compared to the previous year, and launched three flavors within a new range of protein drinks. Matcha has thus become the milk cow of coffeeshops (with prices that can go up to 9€), to the point that establishments specialized in matcha are opening everywhere.

In New York, the 12 Matcha brand offers mixes with binchotan coal-treated water. The city is also home to Matcha House, where guests can order a chocolate matcha or a 'matchadamia' latte. But there is matcha and matcha: in Japan, its production represents only 6% of the total production, against 80% for sencha tea. And it is necessary to distinguish matcha from the first harvest from that of the second or third harvest, more bitter. Result: part of the powdered tea sold as «matcha» today comes from other territories: from South Korea, from China, from Australia, and even from Kenya.

And since one trend is always chasing another, her cousin Hojicha has been widely talked about in recent months. This roasted Japanese green tea, with a grilled hazelnut taste, has less bitterness than a classic green tea, with a lower caffeine content. It is among the flagship drinks of Sōhn, a recent coffeeshop with influences from South Korea, in San Francisco. The team is notably preparing a latte hojicha incorporating homemade banana milk, a nod to the banana-flavored milk from the Korean brand Binggrae, popular since the 1970s.

“It’s a bit like when a vegan person goes to a restaurant and can only have one salad. People sensitive to caffeine should also have the option of ordering a coffee with whipped cream or a espresso and perilla tonic," explains Janet Lee, managing partner of Sōhn, in an article by the New York Times published in December 2025. This wave of Asian and also Middle Eastern coffeeshops introduces hitherto little-known drinks in Anglo-Saxon countries: barley tea, Turkish salep, Yemeni qishr or Kurdish qezwan. In Paris too, addresses of this type have emerged in recent years: Kapé (influences from the Philippines), Bing Sutt (Hong Kong), Maison Phê (Vietnam), Café Shin (South Korea), Bacha Coffee (Morocco), Ilik (Turkey),... "There has never been a better time to stop caffeine," headlined the New York Times.